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#selfhosting is a privilege.

Sure, I agree: it is the best option in many cases, and in some cases it feels like the only option - if you care for things like safety and privacy.

But us - the same community that usually promotes self-hosting - should also be aware that it is a means to an end, we should understand the reasons why it is a good idea... and also design "the fallback" for those who cannot, for some reason, self-host.

And we know how to do that: just look at the healthy community of fediverse servers that are out there, not in competition but in cooperation with a number self-hosted single-user instances. But we don't do it/have the same ecosystem in many other fields.

And self-hosting is a privilege: it demands more financial investment, more time investment, and has some potentially expensive dependencies (stable 24/7/365 internet connection and electricity, for eg.).

Just like the "path to #freesoftware" is a ladder and not a binary switch, service autonomy/independence/sovereignty is too (an often they are even related - how many "need" to use some proprietary app in order to access to a certain service they are dependent of?).